The Choices We Make
by fireheart93
Summary: The Doctor must choose between life and death, and someone is there to help him.


Author's Note: This was writen for my GCSE English Language creative writing coursework. The brief was to write a short story inspired by the phrase 'A Day in the Life of...' so naturaly I looked for a way to turn it into a fanfic. Hope you enjoy reading and remember, feedback is like giving someone a giant hug, you will feel as good as I do :)

The Choices We Make

_I am so tired of my job. Back and forth, back and forth constantly for thousands of years, without as much as a weekend break. I am so tired. But I barely have time for a rest. There's always someone who needs picking up. What's my job you ask? Well my job is to carry people's souls away when their bodies have expired. You see, I am Death. Now don't turn away and leave, I'm not that bad. I really am very nice, I just get given a lot of bad press, which is unsurprising when you consider that most people fear meeting me…but you will. Everyone will, at some point. Well, not quite everyone. Not the Lonely God..._

The Doctor was not having a particularly good day. He had arrived on the farming planet Agricolia hoping to buy some nice bananas, when he had come across a gang of blue aliens attacking two smaller red aliens. He had tried to stop them but had ended up being shot with what looked like crossbow bolts in the arm, leg and one of his two hearts. He had fallen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. He wanted to fight the blackness gradually creeping into the edges of his vision but he was just too tired mentally and physically. In the end he stopped fighting and embraced the blackness covering his vision, knowing that regeneration couldn't save him now.

He woke up to find himself standing on nothing, surrounded by blackness and dull clouds of colour. He looked around, wondering where he was. He was about to call out when he saw a woman walking towards him. She wore a black dress with a white cloak and a hood pulled up over her hair. She was neither young nor old, indeed she had a timeless quality that the Doctor recognised, his people had had that same quality. When she spoke her voice was at once feminine and powerful.

"Well well," she said, "who is this that is trapped between life and death?"

"I'm the Doctor," he replied. "Who am I addressing?"

"I am Death," she said, pushing back her hood. The Doctor saw her hair, the colour of obsidian and her eyes like black holes drawing him in and knew she spoke the truth.

"Why have you trapped me here?" he asked. "What reason do you have?"

"Trapped you!" Death exclaimed. "I have not trapped you here, you have trapped yourself. You do not want to die yet you do not want to live. You have been brought here to Limbo to decide."

"You lie," the Doctor said quietly, unconvincingly.

"I do not!" Death said, angrily. "It is you who lie. You say you fear me, yet you have cheated me countless times in the past centuries of your life. You cannot fear me!"

"I can!" the Doctor shouted back. "I don't fear you for myself, I fear for my companions. Everyone I have ever loved, you have taken away from me. You have even taken my people away. They are all dead, and you took them!"

"Do you think I have that choice?" Death asked. "Do you think I choose who lives and who dies? I have not that power. My only task is to collect the souls from their cold bodies and bring them to be judged. They are already dead by the time I reach them, killed by you and others like you!"

"You lie!" the Doctor shouted, stronger than before.

"I do not!" Death shouted back. "You think I am powerful, but it is you who has the real power. It is you who walks the universe, saving some and condemning others, as if you were a god. And yet you blame me. You blame me for everyone you have ever lost, regardless of the fact that it was you who brought them to that point. You dare to blame me for the extermination of your people when it was you who burned them! You and you alone are responsible for their deaths, not me!"

A silence fell. It was the silence of the grave. There wasn't a single sound, not even a breath. Finally, the Doctor broke the silence.

"You're right," he whispered, defeated. "You're right." He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Death watched him, unblinking.

"I do have to choose who lives and dies. I try to save people, but I lose them…"

"You can't save everyone," Death said, dispassionately. Then, with more warmth she said, "No matter how hard you try, you can't save everyone." She knew what it was like to want to save people. How many times had she wanted to leave the soul of the innocent child in its body, let it stay with its family? But she couldn't, and she had learnt to live with it, or at least, to block it from her thoughts.

"And that's why I'm here, isn't it," the Doctor said, with more animation. "I don't want to live, knowing I have to make those decisions but I'm too much of a fighter to give in and die." Death inclined her head towards him but didn't speak.

"How do I make the choice to live or die?" the Doctor asked.

"You must confront your daemons," Death replied. "Only by facing the reasons for your uncertainty can you make an informed decision."

"I have so many daemons, where do I start?" the Doctor asked. He was talking to himself but Death answered anyway.

"It would appear to me," she said, "that your biggest daemon is your fear of being alone. Everyone you have ever loved has been taken from you. You fear love yet you fear loneliness."

"Then what do I do?" the Doctor asked, looking across at Death.

"You must decide whether love is worth the pain of loss that will inevitably occur. If you make that decision, the other will also be made." Death replied, slowly moving away from the Doctor. He noticed this and called out,

"What would you choose? If you had to choose between life and death, what would you choose?" Death knew he was stalling, trying to put off making the decision, but she answered anyway.

"I would choose life," she said, simply. "I have been trapped in this existence, this half-life, for millennia, guiding the dead on their onward journey. I long for the freedom to choose my own course, without consequences. You and I are not that dissimilar. We are trapped by a duty to help others, forced to watch the ages pass, alone and feared by many. We both pretend we have no choice, that we must do these things, but if there is one thing I have learned in my many years of life it is this: we always have a choice, sometimes it is just easier to pretend we do not." She moved to look straight at the Doctor, "And now let me ask you a question. When you were young you decided to travel the universe, meeting other species and saving people's lives. If you had known then what you do now, how much pain you would have to suffer, would you still have left Galifrey?"

The Doctor stood and thought. He searched his mind for an answer to Death's question. But then he realised, the answer wasn't in his mind. It was in his heart. The part of him he had tried desperately to shut out these past few centuries. He looked into his heart and he knew the answer. In a way he had always known, he had just been afraid to face it. He looked Death in the eye and said one word,

"Yes."

"Then your choice is made." Death said. She stepped backwards, raised her arms and said, "The Lonely God has chosen life, and so let him be freed from Limbo and be returned to his rightful place in time."

And as the Doctor watched, Death appeared to fade before his eyes, obscured by the clouds of colour which grew bigger and brighter until they filled his vision and he felt himself slipping and falling through time and space. And as he fell, he thought he heard a whisper in his ear saying,

"Take heart, Doctor, for you will never be alone."

_And that is how I met the Doctor, whom I once called the Death Cheater. Yet now, to me he will always be the Lonely God, who walks among the stars, who wields both life and death and who cannot save everyone._


End file.
